Disclaimer: This world belongs to the Mouse. I just play here.
Summary: Pre-movie fic. Young Elizabeth, the terror of Port Royal, meets her match. Inspired by BPS drabble challenge "Blossom," but not a drabble by any definition, as it weighs in around 2000 words. Oops. This is what happens when one reads too much Austen and L. M. Montgomery.
The Governess
With all the fuss of setting up a new household and putting to rights the business of the Governor's office, which Weatherby Swann thought his predecessor had attended to rather poorly, it took perhaps more time than it should for that esteemed gentleman to notice that the little girl he doted upon was blossoming into a young woman.
He had known that such a thing was bound to happen someday, but he had not expected that day to come so soon. So when she came in from the garden one May morning with her arms full of scarlet amaryllis and a smudge of earth on her sun-brown cheek, barefoot and leggy because she had grown at least three inches since the hem of her old white frock was last let down, he exclaimed in consternation, "Why, Elizabeth—!"
The girl clearly thought she was to be rebuked, for she flushed and bit her lip; but she faced him boldly. "Yes, Father?"
"If only her mother were still living," Weatherby thought, not without a pang, for the daughter, in the flash of her eyes and the set of her mouth and chin, was almost too much like the mother to be borne. "My dear—" he began, but his courage failed him. He asked, helplessly, "Whatever happened to your shoes?"
"Oh! Sarah made me leave them on the verandah. They're full of sand and mud, you see, and she had only just swept the floor."
"Mud?"
"Yes. From the pond."
"The pond! What in the world—?"
"We were playing pirates," she explained. "And I had to make Will walk the plank."
"Walk the—Then why are your shoes the ones that are filled with mud?"
"It wasn't a very steady plank," she said, with wide-eyed seriousness.
The Governor stared at her, alarmed. Were such diversions normal for a girl of nearly thirteen? He rather thought they were not. Shouldn't she be doing needlepoint, or something? Or playing with dolls? Or was she too old for dolls?
"May I go now?" the child asked.
"Yes, yes, run along," said the Governor, waving her away. It must be his fault, he thought distractedly; he had let her have her head too much, influenced by affection and a wistful fancy of what she might be like if she had been born a son. The result was that she had grown up wild, and he must set it to rights.
He was so distressed, in fact, that he wrote to his sister in England that very afternoon, relating his dilemma and entreating Lady Catherine to advise him on how to proceed. But meanwhile he dreaded the necessary battle of wills that would attend such an endeavor, especially as the will he must face was manifestly stronger than his own; and as time passed he found many more agreeable and less anxiety-provoking matters of business to occupy his mind.
Elizabeth, for her part, only grew browner and wilder as the summer wore on. She enlisted the servants' children, both African and English, as her henchmen and co-conspirators, whilst charming and bullying the adult staff, by turns, into supplying and abetting her schemes. She was queen—Pirate Queen—of her small world, which encompassed the Governor's house and the considerable estate it commanded; and the blacksmith's young apprentice, Master Turner, joined her as her loyal deputy (or, on occasion, the leader of a valiant but inevitably defeated opposition) as often as he could get away from his more gainful labors. Rousing adventures were had, and stirring battles on land and at sea, although when it came time to enact the most daring rescues, the damsel in question was more often than not the hero of the day, and it fell to one of her subjects to languish as the rescue-ee.
But these happy days were destined to come to an end. For Lady Catherine, having recognized the urgency of her brother's situation when he himself did not, had taken it upon herself to engage a person of good references and pay for her passage to Jamaica, sending with her a letter to Weatherby instructing him to install Miss Thorne as a member of his household posthaste, before his daughter was utterly ruined for polite society.
"Bless me, who are you?" said the Governor, when the plain, tallish young woman was shown into his office.
"I'm Miss Elizabeth's new governess," said Miss Thorne calmly, handing him the envelope with his sister's seal. "Lady Catherine said you wouldn't be expecting me, but that you'd certainly have need of me. And—pardon my saying so, your Grace—having met the girl in the hall on my way in, I can see for myself that she was telling the truth."
"I don't need a governess," declared Elizabeth loudly; she had followed Miss Thorne into the room and now stood behind her, making dreadful faces at her back. "Father, tell her."
"Quite right, quite right," Weatherby said, reading over the letter handed him; and then adding hastily at Elizabeth's triumphant crow, "I mean, quite right, Miss Thorne. Elizabeth, do be quiet, dear."
Which Elizabeth did; but not without a black scowl that boded ill for any hope of domestic peace which the Governor might have still cherished.
"I wish you luck with the child, Miss Thorne," Weatherby said, and winced at the egregious face his offspring was now making in the direction of her new nemesis's back. "I'm quite at my wit's end with her. Mostly, I fear, she does exactly what she pleases, without regard for any authority. Least of all my own."
"Shall I assume that you are offering me the position, then?"
"Why, yes. Yes indeed. If, that is," the Governor added, worried, "if you still want it, of course. You do, don't you?"
"Have no fear, your Grace," said Miss Thorne, in a way that made Weatherby suspect her of a glimmer of humor. "I've dealt with worse. Elizabeth and I will get along famously—isn't that right, dear?"
Elizabeth, training eyes huge with hurt and betrayal on her father only to find him assiduously avoiding her gaze, made a choking noise at this and, turning abruptly, ran from the room. Her footsteps could be heard on the stairs, followed by the slam of her bedchamber door.
"I'll go," said Miss Thorne to the Governor's miserable expression, and rose sedately.
"She's a stubborn child," Weatherby warned her, with a look that bespoke intense relief.
"Not as stubborn as I, you may be sure," said the governess, and actually smiled. "I'll find my way round her. There's always a way, you know. Now, if you will excuse me...?"
So it was, when Will Turner knocked at the kitchen door later that day and inquired after Elizabeth, he was told that "the young Miss was not seeing anyone today, Master Will."
"Is she all right?" Will asked anxiously, and "Will she be seeing anyone tomorrow?"
"Oh, no, not tomorrow, and not likely to be anytime soon, either," said the maid. "I'm very sorry," she added, seeing his face fall. "It's that new governess, Miss Thorne. Says your Elizabeth's not to play out of doors anymore without a hat and a chaperone."
Will frowned; from somewhere above, he thought he heard faint screaming and sobbing. "Are you sure she's all right?"
"Quite all right," said the maid, with a grimace that was by way of adding, Leastaways, her lungs are! "Now run along with you, Master Will." And she closed the door.
In fact, Elizabeth was currently indulging in the kind of angry tantrum that only thirteen and spoiled can muster; but the maid saw no reason to share this information with young Will Turner.
It was almost two weeks later that afternoon in Port Royal saw a well-dressed and properly shod young lady tripping along the narrow, dusty alley that led to the back of Mr. Brown's smithy; though she walked as if her shoes pinched her and her pixie-face beneath the hat was just as brown as ever. She glanced around her nervously as if she was doing something she oughtn't—which indeed she was—before tapping at the door and hissing, "Will! It's me!"
After a moment, Will opened the door; and stopped short, staring at her speechlessly.
"Well, hurry and let me in before someone sees me! I couldn't get away until just now, and—What is it?"
"You look—different," said Will, in the uncertain tones of one whose world has just been turned on its head and shaken a few times.
"Yes, I know, it's dreadful, isn't it? And this hat itches like you wouldn't believe." She wrinkled her nose. "I never wished I'd been born a boy until now, Will. It's easy for you!"
Will agreed; but privately he thought the effect of her new appearance, wrinkled nose and all, to be quite transporting, and could not join her in her wish. For while he had been aware, in some part of his mind, that his best friend was a girl, it suddenly seemed a much more important difference than it ever had been before. In fact, it had never occurred to him that Elizabeth Swann was beautiful.
"Is your new governess that awful?" he managed to ask.
"Welllll..." Elizabeth had the grace to look abashed. "She isn't cruel, really, besides insisting on all the hats and shoes and things. She doesn't like me to go out of the mansion by myself, and Father backs her up! But—" and she held up the package she'd been carrying under her arm— "just look what she brought with her from England!"
She offered him the hastily-wrapped package with shining eyes, as if it were some great treasure. And Will, opening it, instantly saw that it was treasure—of a sort. For the astute Miss Thorne had found her way round her young charge, just as she promised. She had bought Elizabeth's good behavior and allegiance with books—and not just any books, but tales of adventure and romance which might be frowned upon by other educators of young ladies.
"Robinson Crusoe? Gulliver's Travels?" He turned the pages eagerly. He was learning to read and write and cipher from Mr. Brown, as such skills were necessary for a craftsman, but his skills had been much improved thanks to his association with Elizabeth and her father's copies of Malory, Chaucer and The Pilgrim's Progress. But they had soon learnt the tales of King Arthur and the Round Table by heart, and slogged through Progress—which even Elizabeth found heavy going—more than once. Here were new adventures and lovely illustrations to be pored over; treasure indeed for these two young imaginations.
"Miss Thorne said I could have these to read as long as I mind," Elizabeth said, with something like awe. "But I couldn't keep them without bringing a few to you. She has more, too, and a lot of Latin ones, which I only know a little of from when I had a tutor, back home. But she says she'll teach me to read Latin beautifully, and French as well!"
It was with such strategies that Miss Thorne—much to the Governor's astonishment, not to mention the general astonishment of Port Royal—managed to make a lady of the young Elizabeth Swann to capture the hearts of blacksmiths and Navy officers alike; and if, perhaps, she was able to do so out of recognition for a kindred spirit, we shall leave that fact to the lady's own discretion. Suffice to be said that this illustrious lady was soon counted among her young charge's bosom friends, and remained with the Swann household until the day, not too many months before the grand adventure of the Black Pearl, when she was herself married to an Admiral; which was thanks in no small part to Elizabeth Swann's finding matchmaking a diverting occupation for both her cleverness and imagination. But that, my friends, is a tale for another time.